The Two Cities

As the penultimate episode in our Apologetics series, we discuss the need for Urban Apologists in particular to address how Christianity has been whitewashed. For this conversation, we are joined by Pastor Jerome Gay, Jr., who is the founder and pastor of Vision Church in Raleigh, NC, the author of The Whitewashing of Christianity: A Hidden Past, A Hurtful Present, and A Hopeful Future, and one of the contributors to the recent volume on Urban Apologetics (published by Zondervan). As Pastor Jerome explains, whitewashing is the way that Christianity is inaccurately portrayed as being a White religion from the very beginning, including the way that prominent African figures in the early church, including figures like Athanasius and Augustine, are regularly represented as white in Christian art. This is an important issue for many reasons, esp. since it is a hurdle to extending the gospel to black communities. Beyond matters of imagery, Pastor Jerome also speaks to the need to live out the gospel and empathetically enter into the experience of others when doing Urban Apologetics. Team Members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. Josh Carroll, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, and Rev. Daniel Parham. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode we continue our apologetics conversation by specifically talking about the problems throughout Christian history with Dr. John Dickson, who is the Distinguished Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Public Christianity at Ridley College, Melbourne, and the author of a number of books, including most recently, Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History (Zondervan), as well as the host of a podcast called Undeceptions. Apologetics for John is primarily about making Christ known, and thus he prefers to speak of public Christianity rather than “apologetics.” Given John’s recent book, and his expertise as a historian, we primarily discuss the horrors associated with the Crusades and how Christians should think about this terrible part of the history of their faith. For John, the greatest apologetic is the local church, both because no individual can really make the full case and also because when the church rightly sings the tune of Christ, unlike what we see with the Crusades, that will be the most compelling presentation of the Gospel as true and beautiful. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Dr. Chris Porter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carrying on our conversation on Apologetics, we are joined by Dr. John G. Stackhouse, Jr., who is Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies at Crandall University in New Brunswick (Canada), and the author of a couple important studies on apologetics, such as, Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today (Oxford University Press) and, more recently, Can I Believe? Christianity for the Hesitant (Oxford University Press). In our conversation Dr. Stackhouse points out how what’s happening in apologetics mirrors what’s happening all around the world with the rise of populism—appealing directly to the masses. Over the course of our conversation we talk about the ethics of platforming and the kinds of motivating impulses that drive the industry, including certain fundamentalist impulses and the nature of Hell. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our Apologetics series, we’re joined by Lisa Fields, the founder of the Jude 3 Project, whose mission is “to help the Christian community know what they believe and why they believe it. Distinctive in its strong emphasis in equipping those of African descent in the United States and abroad.” In our conversation, Lisa tells us a little bit of her journey, how she first got into apologetics, and why she decided to start the Jude 3 Project. As Lisa explains, part of the reason is to address the unique apologetic concerns of Black Community. Questions like whether God exists is always an important apologetic discussion, but most Black people in America do believe in God and so more germane topic need to be explored, such as whether Christianity is just “a white man’s religion.” Lisa explain that Jude 3 is also partly an attempt to ensure that Black voices are represented on all the common apologetics concerns and issues.  As the conversation progresses we touch on some additional insights that Black Apologetics provides for the broader apologetic enterprise, such as unique insights on the Problem of Evil, drawing upon a history of suffering re: slavery, racism, and systemic oppression. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. Amber Bowen, Rev. Daniel Parham, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carrying on our broader conversation on Apologetics, we are joined by an analytic theologian, Dr. James T. Turner, who is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Anderson University and the author of On the Resurrection of the Dead: A New Metaphysics of Afterlife for Christian Thought(published by Routledge). In this conversation we touch on the nature of apologetics as an enterprise designed to demonstrate that Christianity is not fundamentally irrational. As Dr. Turner contends, this is all apologetics really ought to be, and he goes further to explain that the idea of removing intellectual objections to the faith won’t actually lead people to bow the knee to King Jesus. Another branch of our conversation then delves into the subject matter of Dr. Turner’s book, which is the resurrection and the nature of the afterlife. Dr. Turner is a hylomorphist, which is the view that everything is comprised of matter and form. The soul, then, is the form of all living organisms (humans, plants, trees, dogs). The form thus can’t float free from the matter, and cannot be separated from it. This has huge implications for popular apologetics that point to near death experiences as an argument for God (usually implicitly given in the form of a narrative, such as books like Heaven Is For Real). Dr. Turner explains that he holds this view because he believes that the Bible places all of its hope on the bodily resurrection of human beings, as well as the physical restoration of creation, not on immaterial souls going off to Heaven after the body dies. Team members from The Two Cities on the episode include: Dr. Amber Bowen and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our apologetics series, we are joined by Dr. Justin Bailey, who is Assistant Professor of Theology at Dordt University and the author of Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age(IVP Academic). In our conversation, Dr. Bailey offers his constructive proposal for what apologetics could look like that gets beyond a mere focus on the intellect. Further, he wants to distance his approach to apologetics from what he calls “capital A apologetics,” or magisterial apologetics, which promotes a “sage of the stage” who offers a kind of top-down approach full of defeater arguments. Dr. Bailey is clear that his proposal is not an attempt to get rid of the classical arguments for God’s existence, but rather he wants to open up the realm of what fits into the apologetic enterprise. This expanse needs to include the role of the imagination, which is not infantile or make believe, but rather is oriented towards reality, and specifically what possibilities stand before us, thus helping people see what possibilities are available in the life of faith to those who stand outside of it. And the other key expansive bit is the role of empathy, our ability to entertain the perspectives of others and to recognize what a person needs in that moment of encounter, which might not be a defeater argument. Team members of the episode from The Two Cities includes: Dr. Amber Bowen and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode in our apologetics series we address matters of evidence. What counts as “evidence,” and how do we interpret it? Moreover, what do we do when people interpret the evidence differently, or don’t find it to be relevant to the claim being made? Specifically, how should we understand religious disagreement? How should we understand religious experience? Does that count as evidence of God’s existence, God’s goodness, etc? Joining us to address these types of questions is Dr. Greta Turnbull, who is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gonzaga University. Dr. Turnbull is an expert on evidence and disagreement, and helps us realize that evidence is messy. She calls our attention to the differences between logical apologetic questions and more existential/pastoral questions, and she points out how sometimes apologetics sticks too rigidly to logical matters when pastoral/existential issues are more pressing for people. In that light, we discuss how apologetics thus needs to expand and adapt to what is most salient for a given person, esp. since its ostensible aim is to bring people into faith, which is an inherently personal aim. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Dr. Grace Emmett. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this installment of our apologetics series we ask the corresponding question to last week’s episode, Does Apologetics Help Us Read the New Testament? For this conversation we are joined by Ian Mills, who is a PhD Candidate in New Testament at Duke University and co-host with Laura Robinson of the New Testament Review podcast. Ian contends that the modern apologetics enterprise both hinders our ability to read the New Testament and makes us worse people. Over the course of our conversation we talk about both of those aspects of Ian’s indictment on the modern apologetics, looking at specific culprits and also specific examples where our reading of New Testament will be negatively impacted. Team members from The Two Cities on the episode include: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Rev. Daniel Parham, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. Logan Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our conversation on Apologetics we want to take the next two episodes to ask whether apologetics helps us read Scripture. This week we want to ask that question in relation to the Old Testament specifically. We are joined by Dr. Brent Strawn, Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School and Professor of Law at Duke University. He is the author of The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment (Baker), and more recently, Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at The Old Testament (Westminster John Knox). In our wide-ranging conversation, we talk about a number of issues pertaining to the use of the Old Testament in apologetic discussions. We pose several questions to Dr. Strawn, such as, why is it that apologetics makes it hard for us to read our Bibles, why we are perhaps less open to critical scholarship on the Old Testament than the New Testament, and what we should make of apparent contradictions if we aren’t going to feed the apologetic impulse to “tame” or “fix” the problem? Dr. Strawn contends that we need to see the big picture and put everything into perspective relative to central claims of our faith. He suggests that his approach is more compatible with a classic apologetic that is not mired in modernism and modernist constraints about what counts as facticity, historicity, etc. In the end, Dr. Strawn helpfully calls us to read with the grain of the text and to consider Augustine’s position that good interpretation ought to brings us into greater love of God and love of neighbor. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Brandon Hurlbert. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kicking off our brand-new series on apologetics we begin with the end! Our first guest is Dr. Myron Bradley Penner, the author of The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context (published by Baker), and the Rector at the Anglican Parish of Saint Paul in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, Alberta. Dr. Penner helpfully kick starts this series by asking what the goals of apologetics ought to be? He draws attention to many problems with the modern apologetic enterprise with their goals essentially being to win epistemic standoffs and show a force of rational domination. He highlights that many of the key figures in Christian apologetics are engaged in a project that is ironically secular, drawing as it does upon a modernist frame in order to attempt to win a battle against modernity. In our conversation, we discuss the problems that occur with reducing Christianity to propositions, as is so often done in this mode of apologetics. In our postmodern age, we are rightly skeptical of claims to “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” knowledge, and so such an apologetic approach is also out of touch in addition to being so often less-than-Christian. Many of the questions that people are asking nowadays are also not the same ones in which classical apologetics first began. For all of these reasons, modern apologetics needs to die; and raised in its place must be something more personal, holistic, relational, and communal. Team members of the episode from The Two Cities includes: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.